Re: Evaluating Perl skills set

While it's not hard to distinguish between candidates who say they know Perl and candidates who actually do know Perl, it can be time consuming.

What might be useful is an online application that is halfway between an exam and a survey.

It would ask questions like: "how would you generate and process a web form?", and then have answers like:

use CGI.pm's HTML functions to read the query and display stateful forms
use CGI::Application with the ValidateRM plugin
use cgi-lib.pl to parse the browser's form data then print out a response
use the NMS Formmail script
use Template::Toolkit to make a callback-based architecture
make a custom mod_perl handler
use my own homegrown MVC system, 'cos all the others suck!

There aren't a lot of "wrong" and "right" answers there, but you could definitely learn a lot about a person from his or her answer(s).

Michael

Comment on Re: Evaluating Perl skills set

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Re^2: Evaluating Perl skills set by revdiablo (Prior) on Jun 01, 2005 at 16:51 UTC
you could definitely learn a lot about a person from his or her answer(s) The corollary being that the answerer can learn a lot about the questioner by noticing which options were or were not included. In this case, I'm shocked and appalled to see you didn't even mention HTML::Template. ;-)	[reply]
Re^3: Evaluating Perl skills set by magog (Beadle) on Jun 02, 2005 at 16:41 UTC
But I was thinking about it when I mentioned CGI::Application. What, you can't read my mind? :) Michael	[reply]
Re^2: Evaluating Perl skills set by Anonymous Monk on Jun 02, 2005 at 17:03 UTC
Of course we want to make sure we're not conflating unrelated things here. I've used Perl heavily for the past 7 or so years, and shocking as it seems, I've never once wrote a CGI or other web-related program.	[reply]
Re^3: Evaluating Perl skills set by magog (Beadle) on Jun 02, 2005 at 22:11 UTC
Yeah, sorry - I didn't mean to sidetrack this into a discussion of web frameworks. The idea is that you would have many of these kinds of questions, covering many niches (web, testing, refactoring, system administration, bioinformatics, etc., etc., etc.). The candidate's answers would act like a profile of his or her development practices and preferences. A testing question might look like: What do you do to test your programs to ensure the quality of your releases? I do XP all the way: unit testing, pair programming, constant refactoring, user stories I write programs; I make sure they work. No problem! Test first; ask questions later. I write embedded tests with Test::Inline, Pod::Tests, etc. We document the test cases and make a pre-launch checklist that we go through by hand before each release so that we catch regressions I stay up all night if I have to to make sure everything works. It's important to get it right the first time. I write automated tests with Test::More and friends I do a careful code review of everything I write. Other ______________ (please explain) At the very least, you get something to talk about during the interview. "Ah I see you practice "Test First programming". How's that working out for you?" Michael	[reply]